Parenting
You can't choose your parents. Even if you could, you'd need to wait until you're at least 18 to understand the parents you would have wanted anyway.
My parents didn't get married until after I was born. Sort of a formality. They later divorced, though I'm not sure how old I was. At a year and a half, my mother needed a break from me and didn't like my father enough to let him take care of me.
My mother had me when she was 19, two months before her 20th birthday. So at a year and a half, my mother let her aunt and uncle borrow me while she got herself on her feet. Unfortunately, no one ever know what they need to do to get themselves on their feet when they're 21 years old, at least not in today's society.
My mother was most certainly the black sheep of the family, my prototype for sure. My great aunt and uncle (mom's mom's sister and her husband) knew what my mother was becoming and they didn't like it.
Around 4 or 5 years old, my mother, again, needed a break from me, once again handing me off the my great aunt and great uncle. It was different this time, though. My aunt and uncle didn't think it was good for me to be bouncing from house to house, so they accepted me for the last time, telling my mother they weren't going to give me back if they took me this time.
So here I am today, a few days before my 24th birthday and I thought I'd take a moment to share with you my vision of the ultimate parent.
My mother, for a lack of a better term, is a liberal hippie, though she isn't really a hippie or a liberal, she's just 'outside the box'. Well if she's in her own box, I'm in a box outside of hers.
She taught me some important lessons, such as the weakness in human psyche and that I shouldn't let anyone force me into their mold.
My parents, on the other hand, model their lives after Leave it to Beaver. My parents are honest, hardworking people, with two children of their own, 10 and 12 years older than me, me brother and sister (technically, I guess they are second cousins?).
As such, they didn't really know how to raise a child like me. The biggest mistakes they made were honest mistakes. They couldn't have known better. The first mistake they made was allowing subjects to be taboo in their household. They assumed that, because I was more intelligent than their children, that I could use common sense about sex and drugs.
A few days before high school graduation, me and a friend had a celebration in my basement, with 2 18 packs of Coors Light and an eighth of some dankity dank, along with my new bowl I bought that day. Long story short, we were caught, blitzed out of minds. That was essentially the end of our relationship. Things were different after that.
I was leaving for school the following autumn with little guidance or preparation for the real world.
Knowing what I know now, I would have asked the following of my parents.
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- Leave your insecurities at the door. Your children will quickly assimilate your fears and make them their own. For my parents, anything that wasn't "normal" scared the daylights out of them.
- Encourage your child to be their own person. If father owns a company, please don't assume that your son will want to take it over someday.
- It's not about you. It's about your kid. The mother of my favorite nephew (cousin, technically) always tells me that she wants what's best for him. It's not about you. You don't know what your child wants. Encourage them to explore.
- Mistakes are a good thing. Please, for the love of god, let your child make mistakes. Remind them that a mistake is only a mistake if they refuse to correct it. Without mistakes, your child will enter the real world thinking they are god's gift to the Earth, when in reality, no one ever told them they need to work hard. See the Dunning-Kruger effect for more information.
- Your child may have interests that do not coincide with yours. Deal with it. Do not belittle them for it. I was a computer geek during high school, and my parents worried I was anti-social and gave me a hard time for being in my room so much. Now, even though I'm a college dropout, I still have a pretty good job doing system administration, all thanks to the hobby my parents hated.
- In closing, I think the biggest problem with parents is that they never self-reflect. They assume their faults are there for good, so rather than changing them, they just tell their kids not to make the same mistake.
Encourage your children to explore themselves. Teach them to become their own person. They will thank you for it down the road, and you will thank yourself.
Comments (0) 01.23.2010. 13:43
The Guide to Being Human
Where to start, hm? Being human is everything we know, but do we really know much of it? We just assume that because we are human, we know what it's like to be human. In reality, I don't think any of us have much of a clue as to what is happening on this pale blue dot we call our home.
Let's start off with the basics. You are an organic robot with limited self-repair abilities. Your operational span can exceed 100 years if you are lucky, though your processing unit will typically lack full functionality at that point, and likely much of your unit's key function will be lost, most notably reproductive, exretive, and sensory faculties.
We have deduced that our robotic bodies are, to date, nature's best attempt at creating a machine designed for survival. A byproduct of this surviving machine is that our processing unit has achieved the capability of wondering where we are relative to everything else that exists. The more we find out, the more insignificant we become.
What do we mean when we say "we" though? Perhaps an impossible question to answer definitively, but of course we shall try. It's safe to say that without our brain being safely tucked inside of our skull, "we", that is "you" and "I", would not exist. Our robot body provides us with sensation and inputs into this vast network of grey and white neurons, where "I" live.
As an electrical engineering student, I learned that computer software was actually achieved via logical circuitry on a circuit board. Any program that is written as software in a programming language can be made into its own computer chip, written purely in transistor logic.
Analagous to transistors are the neurons in your brain. Their physical, logical configuration is the software that creates "you" and your mind. "You" are a software program, a simulated virtual entity that is confined to its squishy hardware forever. But worry not, fellow simulation, for all conscious minds are virtual..
So here we are, robots controlled by virtual minds, in the middle of what we're pretty sure is a vast, unimaginably large, and, in all likelihood, an infinite reality. We're on a relatively large rock flying around a much larger continuous thermonuclear explosion.
Insofar as we can tell, we have no stated purpose for being here. This is quite difficult for most people to accept, so they have gone to extraordinary lengths to make themselves believe otherwise. Many of them go to great lengths to please and communicate with invisible people they have never met, seen, talked to, heard from or otherwise been given the slightest indication of this person's existance. Whatever it takes to get by, I suppose.
You must admit that something quite interesting is going on, though. This process called "technology", driven by "science" is producing very fascinating things. Say for a moment that we exist inside of a computer. Each one of us is a program that exists in this computer. In this view, we can see scientists as hackers, using what they know about the system to reverse engineer it, manipulating it in all the ways they can figure out.
In a way, the system we call reality is hacking itself.
Comments (0) 01.09.2010. 09:00
Sam Gold is Your Enemy
Within this environment that we have created, we exist in a squishy mechanical shell that science calls homo sapiens. This shell is prone to failure after approximately 70 years, though its lifespan is increasing with the advancement of technology. This shell has a processing unit which is a vast network of neurons, the substrate on which our thoughts exist. Because our thoughts, and consequently ourselves, exist only as an emulation running on a physical substrate, we are virtual entities. I haven't realized the implications of this, but we shall find out eventually.
Our brains have a terrible defect in them. Our subconscious. It nags us incessantly, requiring that we do things for it: smoking cigarettes, eating, sex, childbirth... the list goes on and on. Currently, there is no easy way to change these traits of ours. Meditation will only get you so far, but is arguably the closest we can get to overriding our subconscious.
This shell requires refueling 3 times daily. Tell me, would you buy a car if you had to fill up that often? I think not. We are required to play by the rules of society, jumping through each other's hoops in an effort to impress, driven by your subconscious yearnings. If you are impressive enough, you gain the right to reproduce.
Most yeild to their subconscious desires without noticing. The first step is to notice. What does it feel like to have your subconscious do things for you? Nothing, really. It's very subtle. When you're working out thoughts in your head, you hear a voice that sounds a little like yourself. As your thought process results bubble up into consciousness, this voice speaks words to you.
Now that you've noticed, I'd like to introduce you to the other voice in your head: your subconscious. The two voices are distinguishable, though. Whenever you act upon things your body tells you, it is your subconscious speaking to you. This voice is whiney, demanding, and high maintenance.
In the quest for infinity, you must not delude yourself about your surroundings. To do this, you will need to shed your subconscious, and become who you are. Monitor your thoughts before acting upon them. Deterimine whether they are actions driven by the request of your body, or by your own thoughts. By next post, you should have started noticing the power your subconscious has over you.
Comments (0) 11.21.2009. 07:59